A Lady of Quality eBook

She rose and met his Grace, who had approached her.
Always to his greatness and his noble heart she turned
with that new feeling of dependence which her whole
life had never brought to her before. His deep
eyes, falling on her tenderly as she rose, were filled
with protecting concern. Involuntarily he hastened
his steps.

“Will your Grace take me to my coach?”
she said. “I am not well. May I—­go?”
as gently as a tender, appealing girl.

And moved by this, as by her pallor, more than his
man’s words could have told, he gave her his
arm and drew her quickly and supportingly away.

Mistress Anne did not sleep well that night, having
much to distract her mind and keep her awake, as was
often in these days the case. When at length
she closed her eyes her slumber was fitful and broken
by dreams, and in the mid hour of the darkness she
wakened with a start as if some sound had aroused
her. Perhaps there had been some sound, though
all was still when she opened her eyes; but in the
chair by her bedside sat Clorinda in her night-rail,
her hands wrung hard together on her knee, her black
eyes staring under a brow knit into straight deep lines.

“Sister!” cried Anne, starting up in bed.
“Sister!”

Clorinda slowly turned her head towards her, whereupon
Anne saw that in her face there was a look as if of
horror which struggled with a grief, a woe, too monstrous
to be borne.

Anne cowered among the pillows and hid her face in
her thin hands. She knew so well that this was
true.

“I never thought the time would come,”
her sister said, “when I should seek you for
protection. A thing has come upon me—­perhaps
I shall go mad—­to-night, alone in my room,
I wanted to sit near a woman—­’twas
not like me, was it?”

Mistress Anne crept near the bed’s edge, and
stretching forth a hand, touched hers, which were
as cold as marble.

“Stay with me, sister,” she prayed.
“Sister, do not go! What—­what
can I say?”

“Naught,” was the steady answer.
“There is naught to be said. You were
always a woman—­I was never one—­till
now.”

She rose up from her chair and threw up her arms,
pacing to and fro.

“I am a desperate creature,” she cried.
“Why was I born?”

She walked the room almost like a thing mad and caged.

“Why was I thrown into the world?” striking
her breast. “Why was I made so—­and
not one to watch or care through those mad years?
To be given a body like this—­and tossed
to the wolves.”

She turned to Anne, her arms outstretched, and so
stood white and strange and beauteous as a statue,
with drops like great pearls running down her lovely
cheeks, and she caught her breath sobbingly, like a
child.

“I was thrown to them,” she wailed piteously,
“and they harried me—­and left the
marks of their great teeth—­and of the scars
I cannot rid myself—­and since it was my
fate—­pronounced from my first hour—­why
was not this,” clutching her breast, “left
hard as ’twas at first? Not a woman’s—­not
a woman’s, but a she-cub’s. Ah! ’twas
not just—­not just that it should be so!”